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USB Keyboard & Mouse not working in Windows

I've spent 2 days trying to get to the bottom of this one, and it's really beginning to annoy me. Oh sure, I can do the good old "thanks for making a crap OS M$ - reformat" thing, but it's a big job and I'd just as soon leave everything else where it is rather than having to setup again from scratch.

The problem is this: I've tried many different mice & keyboards. All work fine in BIOS, DOS and the various UBCD-style linux distros. The PS/2 keyboard & mouse ports work fine. All other USB devices plug in and work no problems at all. So, it's definitely a problem tied ONLY to the USB keyboard & mouse part of the Registry. The odd thing is that XP (Pro, SP3) WILL recognise all the USB keyboards & mice I try to plug in - it's just that they don't work after I do. There is the occasional spark of life, but it's very irregular and very short-lived when it happens. Also, if I delete the keyboard or mouse I just installed (after unplugging it) in device manager (with show hidden devices switched on), and then put the same or different keyboard / mouse in a different port, there's a wait of some 10-20 seconds, then the found new hardware wizard proceeds as normal and completes (although it does feel a little slower than it should be), but once the process finishes, apart from a momentary 1 second spurt of life, the keyboard or mouse is largely dead - PS/2 keyboard & mouse sail happily on with no probs.

I think what lead to this was a BSoD that I got when I resumed from standby - this PC has been unhappy with it's nvidia motherboard drivers (oh, surprise... NOT), so I was trying some roll-backs (which all seemed to go fine incl a reboot). I did a repair install after the BSoD (since the USB keyboard & mouse failed after the BSoD), but it made no difference. Initially straight after the BSoD & reboot Windows would try to install the USB keyboard & mouse, only to have both with exclamation marks. I fixed that using some method I found on the 'net at the time, but it hasn't fixed the overall problem.

Surely there must be a tool that is capable of scanning and fixing basic errors like this? Or did M$ just take too many shortcuts in this version of Windows for it to be recoverable?

So, if the mouse works fine in Safe Mode, but not in "normal mode", what is the likely culprit? I've uninstalled the nvidia drivers & tried the mouse without them installed (since the M2NPV-VM motherboard in the PC uses standard Microsoft drivers for the USB - they are listed as "Standard Enhanced PCI to USB Host Controller" (using the usbehci.sys + usbhub.sys + usbport.sys + hccoin.dll + usbui.dll drivers, all 5.1.2600.5512 versions) and "Standard OpenHCD USB Host Controller" (using the same drivers except usbohci.sys instead of usbehci.sys & no hccoin.dll). I know that when I was setting this PC up, I used DriverAgent to get the best drivers - which lead to an occasional BSoD due to the hard drive driver. It was a couple of month's ago now that I did the install: is there another driver that I might have to rollback that could be affecting the USB sub-system's ability to deal with a keyboard & mouse? it's very weird that flash drives are fine: usually when I come across problems like this I have no trouble with USB keyboard & mouse but flash drives won't work.

A thought: I note that the parport & serial "Non-Plug and Play Drivers" entries keep showing up with yellow circles / black ! marks - but they are switched off in the BIOS. That sounds to me like some sort of cross-linking between them and maybe the USB keyboard & mouse? Is that possible? How do I un-cross-link them? I've deleted them, but